I used my browser to search http://deb.devuan.org/merged/dists/ then I checked the directories ceres, beowulf, and ascii.

They all showed that the files InRelease, Release, and Release.gpg had last modified dates of 2019-04-17, so they have not been updated for 5 days so far.

on ceres I get :

/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged ceres main contrib non-free
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii main

on beowulf I get:

/etc/apt/sources.list:deb [ allow-insecure=yes ] http://deb.devuan.org/merged beowulf main contrib non-free
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb [ allow-insecure=yes ] http://deb.devuan.org/merged beowulf-updates main contrib non-free
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb [ allow-insecure=yes ] http://deb.devuan.org/merged beowulf-security main contrib non-free
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii main
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-security main
grep: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*: No such file or directory

and on ascii I get:

/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii main contrib non-free
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb-src http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii main contrib non-free
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-security main contrib non-free
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb-src http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-security main contrib non-free
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-updates main contrib non-free
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb-src http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-updates main contrib non-free
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged ascii-backports main contrib non-free
/etc/apt/sources.list:deb http://deb.devuan.org/merged jessie main

I am still only getting Hits and no Gets on apt-get update.

Should I change the http to https everywhere?

Thank you KatolaZ. I was glad to see at least some acknowledgment of the problem.

I am quite aware of the nature of the unstable version.  I am not wringing my hands in despair.  I just use my virtual machine of ceres to watch what is happening, and to check out more recent versions of software.

The complete wipe out of my desktop was something that needed to be reported, that is all.

I tried adding ascii-backports to my source.list file.  I still get the same response to sudo apt-get -s install policykit-1

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
policykit-1 : Depends: libpam-systemd but it is not installable
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.

libpam-systemd seems to be the problem.  Perhaps the workaround for the systemd dependency has not been addressed yet?

Yes, I understand beowulf is not released yet, which is why I have not posted any comments before, but since it has been brought up....

Thank you @golinux.  I did what you suggested.